IH Barcelona ELT Conference 2002

2002 English Language Teaching Conference for teachers of English to Adults, Children & Business students

Barcelona, February 2002

Speakers (in alphabetical order) and their sessions

Smile Please! Practical Pronunciation

Vicki Anderson (IH Barcelona)
In this session we will examine the different roles of the teacher when dealing with pronunciation, with reference to Spanish and Catalan speakers' problems. We will take a look at some tried and tested ways of helping your students improve their pronunciation.

Biodata • Vicki is a teacher and teacher trainer for both the CELTA and DELTA courses at International House Barcelona. She is co-author, with Robert Campbell, of '3sixty5', a collection of practical teaching ideas published by iT's Magazines.

The problem with exam coursebooks

Brian Brennan (IH Company Training, Barcelona)
Coursebooks are improving tremendously, and up through the levels the student is given published material that tries to provide a multi-skilled focus, reflecting changes in approaches to teaching, as well as greater teacher-friendliness. And then it changes when we hit an exam level. The essence of exams is long-standing reliability, and they move less easily. This session looks at some FCE, CAE, BEC and CPE coursebooks, and how their strong exam-centredness can cause problems for teachers when planning and executing lessons.

Biodata • Brian is Language Training Manager at International House Company Training, Barcelona. He has taught in different parts of Spain, Greece and Britain. His work is currently in Business English teaching, teacher training, developing internet-based courses, reporting for publishers, freelance translating, materials creating and course development. He represents IH on a European Commission Leonardo research and development project into competence-based assessment. He has been a Cambridge Exams oral examiner for 10 years.

Creative Writing on the Net

Gavin Dudeney (IH Netlanguages, Barcelona)
This workshop looks at creative writing on and for the Internet, from small writing classes to fully-blown project work and interactive novels. We will be looking specifically at encouraging students to write more creatively and for a larger audience than the teacher, by producing work to be published on the web for a world-wide audience to view - and all this using simple tools available on most modern PCs (Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer). Practical ideas and a hands-on session in the Internet Room in International House - no prior knowledge of web design or similar is necessary, but basic PC skills will be an advantage.

Biodata • Gavin is Head of CALL at International House Barcelona where he runs the New Technologies Department, combining teacher training with web design and online course preparation. He is also Lead Developer for Santillana Net Languages, one of the world's biggest online language schools. Author of The Internet and the Language Classroom, CUP 2000, for the last 6 years he has worked to promote the use of technology in language education, and this work has taken him around the world from Australia to Colombia, India to Brazil, to name a few.

Socializing

Neil Forrest (IH Barcelona)
What is the role of the "social" in language learning? Knowing how to be "sociable" is obviously an important learning objective. Creating a good classroom dynamic through "socializing" is also crucial. But there are some who would go further and argue that learning a language itself is socially motivated (a process of "socialization"), and that the skills involved are socially constructed. In this talk I look at ways of "being social" in the classroom society, and, principally, at the role of chat.

Biodata • Neil is a teacher trainer at International House Barcelona. Currently he is working on the Cambridge DELTA and CELTA courses. He is also running a teacher development program with newer teachers.

Teaching one-to-one

Duncan Hawthorne (IH Company Training, Barcelona)
Teachers often think that in one-to-one classes the options are limited. In this workshop we will be challenging that view, and looking at the possibilities that are open to the teacher in a one-to-one teaching situation.

Biodata • Duncan worked as a freelance journalist before taking up a career in language teaching. He has been living and working in Spain for thirteen years and currently specialises in Business English teaching. He also participates in the IH Barcelona TD programme and the Translation Department.

Classroom Projects for Student Autonomy

Jáem Heath ÓRyan (IH Barcelona)
"Student autonomy." It's in the syllabus - a criterion by which we should assess teachers. But how do you get there? This is a discussion and workshop on designing long term class projects that turn responsibility for learning over to the students: activities that enhance student motivation and exposure to natural contextualised language and provide teachers with more and better information about student needs.

Biodata • Jáem has worked in ELT and teacher training for more than a decade in fourteen countries on six continents. He is currently a teacher trainer at International House Barcelona.

Jose, what's your name, Jose?

A look at teacher talk in the ELT classroom, with particular focus on the questions teachers ask and the implications for student response and English language development. This workshop will include a brief overview of some of the main issues relating to questioning, including display vs referential questions; response time allowed by teachers and the implications of this for student interactions; and some of the ways teachers can vary questioning techniques for more realistic and effective classroom communication. We will also examine some of the more interesting results of some recent action research conducted at IH Barcelona.

Biodata • Currently based in Barcelona, Jane is working as a freelance teacher trainer. She has taught English and trained teachers in Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Spain. Originally trained up as a CELTA tutor in Australia, she has taught CELTA courses in Australia and Spain for the last 8 years. During this time she has also spent four years in Vietnam, coordinating an English teaching/teacher training project partly funded by the Australian Government.

Why do we teach what we teach?

Roger Hunt (IH Barcelona)
Have you ever wondered why the typical syllabus includes such things as "My wardrobe is next to the chair"? or "What time do you brush your teeth?" ie: furniture vocabulary with prepositions of place and present simple for daily routine at beginner level? If you have wondered, you might like to consider the alternative that I will offer. If you haven´t wondered, you might like to come along to discuss designing a syllabus for your students.

Biodata • The former Director of Teacher Training at International House, London, Roger recently moved to International House Barcelona, where he teaches, trains teachers and runs teacher development courses. He is co-author, with Jim Lawley, of 'Fountain' books 1 & 2 (Longman 92) coursebooks for secondary level learners of English.

101 teaching ideas not destined for Room 101

Roger Hunt (IH Barcelona)
A jamboree of practical ideas designed to get your students speaking and writing well beyond the sentence level.

A Text-Driven Approach to using Video

Or... A bit more than 'whacking' the video on 'cos it's FridayDerrin Kent (IH Barcelona)

Language exists in the world predominantly as TEXT and not as sentences or as vocabulary. Each text has a fairly predictable lexicon which it is likely to contain. This talk will show you a way, and some other ways, of making the most of your home video collection to provide enjoyable and linguistically empowering lessons (on Fridays?)... and will urge you towards the analysis of language at text level rather than seeing it as a collection of words and sentences.

Biodata • Derrin has been teaching in England, Wales, Spain, Brazil, The Czech Republic and Egypt since 1990. He now combines teaching with teacher training on CELTA courses. He is Editor of the Newsletter of the IATEFL Teacher Trainers & Educators Special Interest Group.

Listening: Developing not Testing

Gerard McLoughlin (IH Barcelona)
Students often came up to me complaining that their listening skills were terrible. Teachers would also comment 'Well, today I did a listening - but they could only get half of it'. Classroom practice places more emphasis on 'testing' the students' ability rather than helping them develop the skill of listening. Based on action research with a group of FCE students, I'll demonstrate some ways to help students (and teachers) understand the features involved in listening to spoken English.

Biodata • Gerard is a teacher and teacher trainer and has over 15 years experience. He has worked in Italy, Yugoslavia, the U.K., Egypt and Spain.

Room 101

Lucy Norris & Tom Ottway (International House, Madrid)
An examination into teacher perceptions of their development needs at different stages of their teaching "career" (pre-service, 1-3 years "in" and 4+ years)... This workshop will present the background and the results of some research into teacher development needs. A panel game show in the style of BBC's game show "Room 101", which will involve the panel arguing for or against certain assumption/ideas and risk being banished into Room 101. The audience will be invited to break deadlock decisions.

Biodata • Since 1987, Lucy has been an ELT professional, in the fields of training and consultancy with projects ranging from Aviation to hospitality. Lucy has been commissioned to write and has published coursebooks for young learners and teacher development She has worked in Turkey, Italy, Australia, Spain and the UK. Her main interests are Professional Development, the changing face of ELT and Media (she is IATEFL's Media SIG Events Officer).

Biodata • Tom has been involved in ELT since 1992, living and working in a variety of educational contexts including Australia, Syria, China, the Yemen, Spain and the UK. He is IATEFL's Media SIG (special interest group) co-ordinator. Tom's areas of interest are wide-ranging, and include literature, film and video in the classroom, teacher and learner motivation / development and business.

How to Integrate Technology in the Classroom: A Template

Graeme Reid (IH Netlanguages, Barcelona)
Have you had problems using technology in class? Too many students per computer. Slow internet connection. Where and when and how do we use computers in an hour long class? In this workshop we will take a look at different ways to integrate technology into a lesson plan and discuss some techniques to cover ourselves when our technology doesn´t work.

Biodata • Graeme has been teaching EFL for nine years and has conducted teacher training courses around Eastern Europe, Spain, Central Asia and India. Last year he completed his MA in Digital Media at the University of Sussex in Brighton. He now works for Santillana Net Languages in Barcelona, who design and teach languages courses over the Internet. Graeme also runs streamadelica.com, who specialise in non linear interactive narrative and making videos for the web.